Sway 1.0 Released For This i3-Compatible Wayland Compositor

[Slithery]

I doubt this project will be enough to sway Nvidia.

Ba dum tiss

[Luke_Wolf]

This is so true. Actually I see GNome as really benefiting from major refactoring. The KDE/Q crowd is trying to modernize with code more compliant with the latest C++ standards.

Which brings me to perhaps the biggest issue here, the code base is still largely C. While the timing probaly isn’t good for a switch to a modern language I really believe the Linux community must start looking at alternatives to C if we want to increase the quality of system software and apps. That means Rust, Swift or one of the other new breed of languages.

Great. When can they expect a pull request from you?

As nice as it would be for everyone to shift over to Rust, the truth is that these are large pre-existing code bases and calling for a full rewrite in another language, especially a shift such as from c to rust is an immense if not insurmountable amount of work. It's honestly easier to just make something entirely new.

[Grinch]

Not only that, but by developing wlroots as well the author has created shoulders for other people to stand on.

Indeed, as good as Sway may be, this is really the greatest contribution DeVault and the rest of the developers on the project have made.

[dkasak]

This is so true. Actually I see GNome as really benefiting from major refactoring. The KDE/Q crowd is trying to modernize with code more compliant with the latest C++ standards.

Which brings me to perhaps the biggest issue here, the code base is still largely C. While the timing probaly isn’t good for a switch to a modern language I really believe the Linux community must start looking at alternatives to C if we want to increase the quality of system software and apps. That means Rust, Swift or one of the other new breed of languages.

Serious projects don't rewrite every 2-3 years to target <INSERT LATEST LANGUAGE HERE>. That's what UI devs do, granted, and they somehow manage to continue getting away with it ( money abounds ). Just because some Google dev has blogged about their hottest new creation, and managed to froth up some support amongst said UI devs ... it still doesn't mean anything, and goes by largely unnoticed by people working on serious projects.

[stingray454]

My main gripe with most distros nowdays is mixed DPI support - HiDPI on multiple screens works fine in many distros, but when using for example a 4k laptop screen with a 1920x1080 monitor things are usually really broken. I understand Sway handles this really well, did anyone try mixed DPI and can confirm this? Would be really good hearing your experiences.

Also, does things like games under Wine run well with Sway? Is XWayland handling this?

If I can find a good DE that can handle all my use-cases seamlessly I'll swap in a heartbeat

[polarathene]

My main gripe with most distros nowdays is mixed DPI support - HiDPI on multiple screens works fine in many distros, but when using for example a 4k laptop screen with a 1920x1080 monitor things are usually really broken. I understand Sway handles this really well, did anyone try mixed DPI and can confirm this? Would be really good hearing your experiences.

Also, does things like games under Wine run well with Sway? Is XWayland handling this?

If I can find a good DE that can handle all my use-cases seamlessly I'll swap in a heartbeat

AFAIK, that's mostly an X11 issue? I remember working on a screen recorder/snapshot utility and it would get both of my displays as a single image unless I requested a cropped region. I imagine it's something due to that?

With Wayland it's different, and I believe a non-issue with others supporting Wayland like KDE? It's just the more larger/complex distros aren't exactly Wayland ready yet, either from lacking features or not being stable/reliable for certain usage/drivers. So while your wish might be solved with Wayland, it might be trading in one issue for another atm.

[Guest]

Serious projects don't rewrite every 2-3 years to target <INSERT LATEST LANGUAGE HERE>.

You are right. But for KDE and Gnome It's been 20 years and not 2 or 3. And the programming languages they use are twice that age!

[dkasak]

You are right. But for KDE and Gnome It's been 20 years and not 2 or 3. And the programming languages they use are twice that age!

Newer, in the languages space, doesn't mean better. The opposite. C has stood the test of time, and people use it because it's blindingly fast, and doesn't change every 3 months.

[Guest]

Newer, in the languages space, doesn't mean better. The opposite. C has stood the test of time, and people use it because it's blindingly fast, and doesn't change every 3 months.

No one's saying they haven't stood the test of time. That doesn't mean there aren't better options nowadays.

Linux is the only platform where desktop apps are built in languages that old. The ergonomics of using a language might not matter to you but it sure as hell matters to most developers.

What I'm trying to say is, you can continue using C for drivers and firmware, but if we want to grow our platform on the desktop, we need more developer friendly options for building userland apps.

[dkasak]

No one's saying they haven't stood the test of time. That doesn't mean there aren't better options nowadays.

Linux is the only platform where desktop apps are built in languages that old. The ergonomics of using a language might not matter to you but it sure as hell matters to most developers.

What I'm trying to say is, you can continue using C for drivers and firmware, but if we want to grow our platform on the desktop, we need more developer friendly options for building userland apps.

There are a plethora of options. I do a lot of perl-gtk3 development, and I'm starting to move some things to pygtk. There are bindings for gtk and qt for every major language around - including C#. Small-scale projects will continue to use 3GLs, and larger ones will use C / C++. I don't see the problem here. As for ergonomics mattering to 'most developers' ... I guess it depends what you mean by 'developer'. If you're talking about dime-a-dozen java 'developers' ... <yawn> ... and as for the rest, if there were such a movement of talented devs who wanted to write apps in something else, then what you're talking about would already be here ... we'd all be writing desktop apps in some god-aweful reesarch project like Go or NodeJS or whatever was in fashion.

Anyway, as people say ... patches accepted.